A seasoned woman is spicy. She has been marinated in life experiences. Like a complex wine, she can be alternately sweet, tart, sparkling, mellow. She is both maternal and playful. Assured, alluring, and resourceful.

It is Hillary's [Clinton] star power that radiates to every corner of the ballroom. New York bigwigs, such as financial-media impresario Michael Bloomberg, attorney and labor mediator Theodore Kheel, and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, crane to see her.

The perceptions of middle age have their own luminosity.

Husbands come and go; children come and eventually they go. Friends grow up and move away. But the one thing that's never lost is your sister.

A restless vitality wells up as we approach 30.

In the many times I have seen Hillary [Clinton] speak, she never fails to dazzle audiences by speaking in paragraphs, without notes.

When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking.